Buttered Niblets make big return with saucy first show

Arellano Theater was packed this past Friday as students vied to get the best seats to see the first show of the season by the Buttered Niblets, Hopkins comedy improv group.

Although the admittance fee was incredibly low, just a dollar, no one was disappointed.

The entire group ran onto stage in the dark, and the stage lights went from black to full as their stomping built up to a crescendo.

Even this had the crowd going wild for them; the Buttered Niblets are certainly a very popular and much-anticipated group on campus.

And they didn’t let their fans down.

The show opened with the game “Sentences,” played by senior Andrew Yip and junior Ian White.

When the audience came in, they were asked to write a sentence on a piece of paper, from which the actors drew a handful and incorporated into their scene about getting a bee sting.

Any doubts which the audience may have had disappeared almost immediately after the scene started; even a minute into the show, Yip and White were evoking laughter already.

This continued throughout the show, with one hilarious game after another.

Two of the games which stood out the most both involved senior Mike Alfieri and junior Danny Kaplan, along with White.

In one game, called “Half Life,” Alfieri, Kaplan, and White had sixty-four seconds to do a scene involving Pokemon (a shouted suggestion from the audience).

Then, they had to repeat the scene in thirty-two seconds, and then sixteen seconds and so on, all the way down to two seconds. Seeing Alfieri, Kaplan, and White run around the stage screaming in what looked like chaos in order to do their initial scene in the allotted amount of time was one of the highlights of the night.

The other game with Alfieri, Kaplan, White, and junior Mike Zaccardo began with Alfieri being sent out of the room.

In this scenario, Alfieri is late to work, but he does not know why he is late to work, as the audience shouts out suggestions once he is outside the theater. His boss, White, demands to know the answer. So what does a desperate employee do? Rely on his fellow workers, of course! Zaccardo and Kaplan must do charades behind White’s back in order to show Alferi why he was late to work.

And by the way, miming “eating a dolphin,” “being stuck in a hot air balloon,” and “spooning a prostitute to death” is not something that anyone can do easily.

Kaplan and Zaccardo pulled it off, though, and Alfieri was able to finally shout out (amidst peals of laughter) the reasons he had been late.

Although the show overall brought long and raucous laughter, parts of the show lagged, notably the game called “Armando”.

In this game, guest star senior Mac Schwerin was brought on stage to tell a story based on a prompt from someone in the audience, from which members of the groups drew inspiration for improved scenes, from which Schwerin told stories, from which there were more scenes, and on.

Although the scenes and stories certainly did evoke much laughter from the audience and was up to the Buttered Niblets’ usual wonderful quality of acting, this game could have been much more effective if it had been cut shorter than the fifteen minutes it played on for, as it started the drag a little bit.

Overall, the show was extremely successful.

For most people, it is difficult and extremely nerve-wracking to come up with comedic lines on the spot while in front of a hundred people, but the members of the Buttered Niblets seemed to have no problem whatsoever.

Comedy comes to them as easily as breathing, and they left the audience wanting to see more.

When the show ended, the cheers and applause were thunderous and well-deserved.

Undoubtedly, many, if not most of the audience members will be lining up again on October 22nd for the Buttered Niblets’ next scheduled show, and if you weren’t there this time, be sure to mark the date on your calendar.

It’s a night you don’t want to miss.